The makers of Gujarati film “Hellaro” are back with a bang. Four years on, they are all set to release their second feature film, “Kamthan”, on February 2, 2024. “Kamthan” is based on popular Gujarati writer Ashwini Bhatt’s last of dozen-odd Gujarati novels, also called “Kamthan”. It revolves around the mess created by a thief,  belonging to  a denotified tribe -- a community traditionally identified in the so-called civilised world as consisting of criminals.

India has 2,43,237 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) cases pending in its Fast Track Special Courts (FTSCs) till January 31, 2023, despite Central Government’s robust policy and financial commitment. Moreover, even if no new case is added to this long list, the country will need at least nine years to clear this backlog, says a new study.

At a time when the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s (CMIE's) report claims an upward trend in employment in India’s labour market with 15 million people entering the workforce, senior economists have sought to expose the claim by stating that a fall in unemployment is not equal to a rise in employment. 

New research underlines urgent need for strategies and transition plans to combat climate change, remain successful and meet stakeholder expectations. As world leaders gather for COP 28, ACCA (the Association of Chartered Accountants), IFAC (the International Federation of Accountants) and professional services firm PwC released a  new report : "The role of the CFO and finance function in the climate transition: driving value and sustainability", based on a survey of 1,000 senior finance professionals around the world. The research reveals that 20% of organisations in India don’t have an emissions plan in place and 25% of those don’t intend to develop one. The research found that, globally almost half of respondents (46%) have yet to produce a plan for reducing their carbon emissions. Alarmingly, 70% of those respondents without an emissions plan say they currently have no intention of developing one. This is a significant problem given that successful transition planning to ...

  The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has expressed deep concern over the adverse health effects caused by packaged foods high in salt, sugar, and saturated fats. Recognizing it as a violation of the Right to Life and Right to Health of Indian citizens, the quasi-judicial body called for a response from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) regarding its selection of front-of-pack labels aimed at providing consumers with information to make healthier choices.

  The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad's (IIM-A's) latest round of Business Inflation Expectations Survey (BIES) has found that sales and profit margins of Indian businesses have remained subdued despite  tall claims  by the Government of India (GoI) that the Indian economy doing well even as world is going in wrong direction.

Recently, reputed Gujarati journal "Sarthak Jalso", edited by well known writer Urvish Kothari, published an article by Shruti Shah. I posted its pdf version, sent to me by Urvishbhai, on a blog Shruti and I run:  https://saankal.blogspot.com/ .   The article is about our seven year long stay in the former Soviet Union during the turbulent period that led to the collapse of the Communist rule -- 1986-93. I thought Gujarati readers would be interested in reading the article, hence I posted a link of the blog post on Facebook. Prompt came Facebook's reply: the link violates it's community standards, so I should withdraw the article or send my objection. I sent objection, but nothing happened!  I don't understand which community standards was the Facebook referring to. The link carried snapshots of cover of "Sarthak Jalso" and first page of Shruti's article.  The cover has photograph of two towering mountain edges very close to each other and a person, ...

I was much amused to read the "visual story" about Reliance World Plaza put open in Mumbai. Top celebrities of Bollywood participated in the event. Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani, Nita Ambani, others must be feeling great about it. The event ironically took place a day after I visited ISCON mega mall in Ahmedabad. The mall, to put it mildly, is in tatters. Yes, it too is part of Reliance framework. It used to have some of the big names quoted in the Reliance World Plaza Mall visual story. Once a throbbing attraction of Amdavadis, the ISCON mall's 70% shops are closed. Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has sealed several of the high profile shops of the Ahmedabad mall for failing to deposit tax. Even elevators and lifts are not working, hence senior citizens have to climb up on stairs, which are dirty. Its passages are dark, as there are no lights there. ISCON mall used to have an excellent food court, a bakery shop. Nothing of it exists now. Do Muk...

A high-profile American Bar Association (ABA) report, prepared by its Center for Human Rights, which claims to mobilize lawyers to defend threatened advocates, protect vulnerable communities, and hold governments accountable under law, has accused the Government of India of misusing counter-terrorism financing legislations in order to targets non-profit organizations (NPOs) and human rights defenders.

 Last year as many as 55 “attacks” on minority communities in Gujarat took place, a compilation of each of these incidents by a state civil rights group has said. Compiled by the Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), a report enumerating these incidents was released in Ahmedabad at a meeting of around 70 minority community leaders from different districts of Gujarat.

  Urgewald, a German environment and human rights NGO, which claims to be working for establishing strong environmental and social standards for the international finance industry, has called India "the number one hotspot of the coal mining boom" in the world. It states this in a report "The 2023 Global Coal Exit List (GCEL): Failing the Phase-Out", prepared by Urgewald and more than 40 NGO partners, seeking to offer in-depth information on over 1,433 companies operating worldwide along the thermal coal value chain.

At a Congressional briefing in Washington DC, while condemning the "wrongful incarceration" of well-known activist Umar Khalid, US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Commissioner Eric Ueland called Khalid a “staunch defender of religious minorities” who “peacefully protested… discriminatory legislation.”

  Participating in a webinar on ‘Dams, Development and the Teesta Floods’, organised by the advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) in Delhi, experts and activists have asserted that the recent Sikkim floods were actually a “disaster foretold.”

A civil rights group, Right to Food Campaign (RtFC), has taken strong exception to the order given by the district collector of Patan, Gujarat, to transfer all the ration cards from the Dalit Fair Price Shop (FPS) dealer to another village based on the social boycott that has been continuing against a Dalit dealer by the Thakor Community (upper caste) in Kanosan village.

  In a significant move, Commissioners on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) have raised concerns about the “sophisticated, systematic persecution” of religious minorities by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a hearing on India in Washington DC.

A  new report  released by two global NGOs, BankTrack and the Toxic Bonds Network, has claimed to have come up with “a disquieting truth”: that Barclays, a financial heavyweight with a “controversial” track record, is deeply entrenched in a “disturbing” alliance with “the Indian conglomerate and coal miner Adani Group.”

A new  report , “The Junk Push: Rising Consumption of Ultra-processed foods in India- Policy, Politics and Reality”, public health experts, consumers groups, lawyers, youth and patient groups, has called upon the Government of India to check the soaring consumption of High Fat Sugar or Salt (HFSS) foods or ultra-processed foods (UPF), popularly called junk food.

  During a Congressional Briefing held on Capitol Hill, Washington DC, Nadine Maenza, former Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), has wondered why the Biden administration should raise issues of mass anti-minority mob violence  -- particularly in Haryana and Manipur -- with Modi. Modi should be told that if such violence continues, the US will be “compelled by law” to designate India as one of the world’s worst offenders of religious freedom, she urged.

  Levels of water scarcity are soaring in India and other major economies, including the US and China, as annual water use has risen by around 3,500 billion m3 globally over the last century. Action to increase water circularity through global collaboration and innovation could help tackle this. Doing so will bring wider benefits -- including reducing drought risk, supporting climate goals, and advancing social development to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals - according to new research by British Standards Institute (BSI) and Waterwise.

  A new study has blamed Gujarat’s powerful milk cooperative sector, known across the country as Amul, for failing to take into cognisance the need to place under its wings urban area pastoralists, popularly known as Rabaris, involved mainly in selling cow milk to individual consumers. The study insists, that this, coupled with the lack of any policy on the part of the Gujarat government to “rehabilitate and modernise” the Rabaris’ business, has pushed the pastoralists to the margins of urban society.

A well-attended civil society meet, drawing a parallel between what happened in Manipur and the recent violence in Mewat, has insisted that in Mewat, like in Manipur, one saw state was "complicit" towards the perpetrators. Speakers at the meet, organised by the Campaign Against State Repression (CASR), insisted that those "falsely implicated" in Mewat violence, most of whom were Muslims, should be released and compensation be paid to the "victims of demolitions". The speakers also sought arrest of Hindutva leaders like Bittu Bajrangi, Monu Manesar and others allegedly responsible for instigation of violence in Nuh and other places in Mewat. Called “Authority and Complicity: Exposing State Sponsored Violence from Manipur to Mewat”, a fact-finding report on Nuh violence titled “Persecuted for Resistance” was relelased at the meet. Initiating the meet, senior activist John Dayal, analysing the socio-political condition of Nuh, said, all the shops of Muslims i...

  It was a pleasant surprise the other day. I received a phone call from Sohail Hashmi, who during my early college days initiated me into Left-wing student politics in Delhi University; the year was 1971. Sohail said he was in Ahmedabad. I asked him to come over. However, he told me he had come with an exhibition of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust ( Sahmat ) on creative expressions of artists on 75 years of India’s independence. So I should reach there at its inauguration. Organised at  Arthshila , a studio which claims to “facilitate artistic expression and curate creative experiences", situated next to the high-profile Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), I reached there to meet Sohail, whom I had not seen since mid-1970s, though would occasionally interact on phone (and sometimes on social media). On reaching there, sitting just outside the studio, he told me that in all Sahmat had collected 280 creative expressions, of which about 128 were on display at Arth...

  A recent study conducted by Bhubaneswar Bikash Sangathan and Atmashakti Trust sheds light on the dire water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) situation faced by slum dwellers in Bhubaneswar, stating that a staggering 22.7% (84 slums) of the surveyed areas are grappling with severe problems of contaminated drinking water, posing significant health risks to the residents.

Living in Vejalpur in Ahmedabad is a nightmate for middle classes during monsoon. The society where I live, Shrinandnagar Part 2, houses about 3000 people and has nearly 650 flats. It is society where an elected BJP corporator also lives. I went up on the terrace on Sunday morning to see if waters had receded somewhat after the heavy 6 inch rains that continued yesterday till midnight. They did not. I took a few photographs. Even eight hours after I took the photographs, things remained unchanged. I was told that the the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation had put up a facility last year to clear any such drain immediately. It appears that the facility which is supposed to pump water in the Sarkhej Roza lake failed to work.  Our society, as also Shrinandnagar Parts 1 and 3, where more people live than what they do here, are low lying. Built by Bakeri, known to be a "clean" builder, all these are in low lying. Some say a huge water body was recovered to bui...

Recently, I went with a small group of friends to the south of Ahmedabad. I was part of the team which was called to enjoy rural dinner. Previously an arid, the entire agricultural land in the area, I found, has been turned green. What a site, I thought, even as I was told by a farmer that they produce different vegetables. I found small trucks reaching the small farm house where we were to dine to upload several bundles of vegetables, including tomatoes, which are in the news for their high costs.  One of the farmers took us for a walk to the nearby areas. We stopped at a small eucalyptus forest, grown on the common grazing land. The farmer told us that this forest "was sucking away lot of underground water, which we should be using for agriculture." He explained, "This is the nature of the tree. Why has the forest department grown this forest is difficult to understand." As he kept on complaining, we took a few photographs of this small patch, which stood just nex...

  A US congresswoman and top officials from the United Nations (UN) and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) have expressed “deep concerns” over the ongoing “horrific” violations of human rights and religious freedom in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule. They called on the Biden administration to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).

  A global rural peoples' movement, People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCSF), taking strong exception to bombings in rural areas of Asia, has said that India has witnessed "airstrikes and militarization on plundered land". Recalling recent incidents, it accused the Indian government for launching " aerial bombing campaign  in Bastar, targeting the border regions of Telangana, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha."

  In an unprecedented move, the European Parliament has passed a resolution blaming intolerance towards religious and belief minorities, including Christians; politically motivated, divisive policies promoting Hindu majoritarianism; increase in activity by militant groups; and partisan involvement by security forces for the ongoing violence in Manipur.

  Testimonies at a public hearing in the wake of preparations for the G20 summit, where representatives from Mumbai, Kolkata, Nagpur, Indore, Udaipur, apart from different bastis in Delhi, have revealed "harrowing experiences of forced evictions", a report prepared by the organisers identifying themselves as Concerned Citizens of India has claimed.

  A civil society discussion in New Delhi organised in the wake of the screening of a documentary ‘Maharashtra in the Wake of Hate’ has highlighted how the Holocaust in Fascist Germany did not begin in gas chambers but with hate speech”, even as comparing the silence of Indian state authorities with the emerging view in Europe that the Manipur situation is similar to what is happening in Syria and other conflict areas across the world.

  A new report, which has named five French banks and a pension fund for supporting Myanmar military junta, has blamed one of them, Crédit Agricole, for investing in India’s state-owned company Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) that has been implicated in the sale of military equipment to the Myanmar junta since the 2021 coup attempt. The  findings  by global NGOs Info Birmanie, BankTrack and Justice for Myanmar (JFM) have been published while France is  preparing to welcome  Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a guest of honour at the July 14th Bastille Day parade in Paris, as part of the celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the France-India partnership. The report also notes that BEL is a leading partner of the Thalès Group group,too. A JFM  investigation  published earlier had revealed that one of Thales' long-time partners, BEL, has a particularly close relationship with the Myanmar junta, and exports military technology to it. A special se...

  In an important development, Justice Navin Chawla of the Delhi High Court has dismissed the appeal filed by PepsiCo India Holdings (PIH), against a revocation order on its Plant Varietal Protection (PVP) certificate in December 2021 on its IPR on a potato variety. The revocation order was earlier passed by the Protection of Plant Varieties & Farmers’ Rights Authority in December 2021 on an application filed by farmers’ rights activist Kavitha Kuruganti.

  Forbes India, an obvious subsidiary of Forbes, one of America's top business magazines, has clubbed India among pop 10 largest economies in the world in 2023, with India being the fifth largest. I was a little surprised when I read this. However, as a read through the  news story , my apprehensions appeared to be correct. First let me quote from the story itself. It says, "The United States of America, China, Japan, Germany, and India are the largest economies in the world in 2023, as per their GDP data. GDP serves as a key metric for assessing the magnitude of a nation's economy." It even describes the methodology of its calculation: "The conventional approach for gauging a country's GDP involves the expenditure method, wherein the total is derived by aggregating expenditure on fresh consumer goods, new investments, government outlays, and the net value of exports." It praises India in following words: "India's economy boasts diversity and sw...

  A new research paper by five scholars from top institutions of the United States and the United Kingdom has come to the drastic conclusion that the levels of urban segregation in India faced by Muslims and Scheduled Castes (SCs) “are comparable to Black/White segregation in the US”, underlining, “Within cities, public facilities and public infrastructure are systematically allocated away from neighborhoods where many Muslims and SCs live.”

Manu's statue in Rajasthan High Court premises Controversy has broken out around a Gujarat High Court judge asking the father of a pregnant teenage girl to read Manusmriti if he cares to find out when a girl gets pregnant. He said, the ancient treatise approvingly says that a girl can get pregnant at the age of 17, plus or minus a few months. Surely a very odd comment; however, some of the enthusiastic social media people -- mainly Modi haters -- made it an occasion to blame Gujarat for it. Identifying Gujarat with Modi is nothing new among some left-of-centre activists, even academics. Anything bad emanates from Gujarat, they seek to suggest. Often words like "Gujjus" are derogatorily used to criticise Gujarat. These people go so far as to say, this is the impact of eating dhoklas, surely a tasty Gujarati dish. Being a Gujarati myself, I think, such comments are parochial in nature. No doubt, some of the worst post-Independence communal riots took place in Gujarat -- in ...

A former Gujarat government official recently shared a tweet   by Subramaniam Swamy where a video shows Prime Minister Narendra Modi telling school children in his hometown Vadnagar that their face would glow if they perspire four times a day. He suggested his face was glowing exactly because of this reason. I have no idea whether facial glow is linked with how many times you perspire in a day, but what I know is, Modi would profusely avoid any perspiration when he was Gujarat chief minister. Thus, in 2006, Modi undertook a fast in support of the Narmada project, which he said the Centre was not supporting. The fast, it was declared, lasted for about 51 hours. I don't recall which month it was, but to avoid perspiration, he got installed air conditions in the open, just next to the spot where he and his colleagues were undertaking fast for the Narmada dam. When some enterprising journalists tried watching the ACs, they were manhandled -- for it would show his fast in poor light. S...

  A fact-finding report, prepared by the Mumbai-based non-profit, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS), has cited the Vadodara Ram Navami violence of March 30 as yet another example of how, after the BJP consolidating its hold on political power in Gujarat post-2002 riots and at the Centre in 2014, the nature of communal riots has changed, underlining, as opposed to high-intensity violence earlier, now riots have become “more sub-radar and at a smaller scale, more localized”.

Campaign groups Ekō, India Civil Watch International (ICWI), and Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), referring to Meta’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), to be held on May 31, where vote on Proposal 7’s bears “significance for the Indian audience”, has said that its outcome is particularly important against the backdrop of allegations against

A report prepared by the top child welfare NGO, Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI), has identified as many as 15 offenders allegedly violating the Indian baby food law, the Infant Milk Substitutes Feeding Bottles, and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 1992, and Amendment Act 2003 (IMS Act), stating, compliance with the law “seems to be dwindling by the day.” Launching its report on the occasion of the World Breastfeeding Protection Day, 21st May, BPNI says, “As media, especially social media, gains its strength over the years, there is unrelenting promotion of the products under the scope of this law. Celebrities have joined the businesses to promote baby foods, which are not only ultra-processed food products and mostly high in sugar which makes it inherently harmful and they end up displacing the precious protector the mother’s milk.” Noting that “undermining breastfeeding and complementary feeding through commercial influence also vio...